My plays are over-full of jests bawdy and foul, and oft attended by the basest rascals, yet of late are reckon'd most exquisite art. How came this to be so?

Sweet William,

While thee has long possessed this dogged belief that thy skill with words is somehow unworthy, no doubt born from the pragmatism of thy glove making father and distempered Warwickshire airs you currently reside in, let me remind you, with some urgency, of the foolishness of such doubt.

‘‘Tis true, our art was considered most base. Do you recall and remember the times you lodged in Shoreditch? Where off Curtain Road was Holywell Lane wherein the actors found their lodgings? Was that not a place wherein our art was most low? A place where all of us who partook of theatre were as criminal as any knave? (I was but an infant then but consider those employed there my peers).

Do you remember telling me of events there? Kit Marlowe and Tom Watson both killed Will Bradley on nearby Hog Lane. Gabriel Spencer’s murder of James Feake just outside your very lodgings?

Knell, Porter, fellow writers and actors killed in those rough streets. And the likes of Kit Marlowe, Ben Johnson, others, killers via duel or vendetta most plain.

Was not then the home of Burbage’s ‘Theatre’ and it’s rival The Curtain most ideally placed? Was it not a place of cheap and bawdy entertainment? Were not these playhouses the homes of lewd songs and dances, places of riot, affray and murder?

It was here thy did learn thy craft Will. But do not allow the passing of the years addle thy wits. It was here, in this rough and seemingly barren place of violence and whoredom and duels, that Kyd and Marlowe also flourished.

How alike both you and Kit I have been told; of the same age and class; the only difference was his attendance to Cambridge. That and thy demeanours. He was most vicious with tongue and dagger; a poet true but one with a darkness within him. How much did he suit Shoreditch? So much that Johnson in his cups once convinced he was born secretly in its streets.

What a world Theatre was then. Burbage has began his idea of plays as entertainment sans distraction; Kyd and Marlowe showed us that the very language we spoke was changing, words had become a new currency. Each company would be expected to do a show every afternoon and at most a play would perform three times before the audience grew stale and bored.

Oh for a hit that would run for a dozen shows back then! Yet here it was, young actor, always armed (as all were) that you learned your art amidst these, the rudest of mechanicals.

How much relief did thy feel when you entered your lodgings in Bishopgate near St Helen’s? Near to the Black Bull Inn (one of the few places within the Liberties where plays were staged- thy had never recalled to me if you played there, but thy were a Queens Man then we’re you not?)

And yet here, even here young journeyman of the stage, you began to show thy writings were more than just bawdy jests. That you had follow Marlowe’s example, and elevated words from beyond bawdy humour to the likes of art, of prosody most true.

And while Peele may have helped you with Titus Andronicus, and in its violence perhaps lies the desire to sate the dark thirsts of the Shoreditch audience, thy showed true skill.

We both know that the comedic moments of thy early plays were tribute to the great clown Tarlton. Like all such speeches, we write the outline and allow the clowns speak extempore. This was not base wit William, but empowering the comic most skilful to lift the mood and provoke humour based upon the sense of the crowd.

And we see around this early era your craft with words grow- The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Loves Labour’s Lost (and Love’s Labour’s Found), The Comedy of Errors, all showed thy gift for comedy true, but ‘‘twas more than just low humour Will.

‘T’was remark’d by many that thy talent lay not just in the humour, but in the natural way you spoke to the people. Look to thy early success with Henry VI? One king begat three plays and demand was so great for imitation that even Kit Marlowe was forced to respond (and how many wondered why of all kings he picked Edward II? How very Marlowe!).

And this is only when speaking of thy early and more marginal works. Despite barbs from Robert Greene even these were acclaimed! Sweet Will, did not from May to April of 1592 Henslowe account for 16,344 souls attending The Rose to hear thy words? Base rascals draw not so deeply as to command between 2 and 3 thousand souls per performance.

While Greene called thee ‘Upstart Crow’ and ‘Johannes Factotum’, he missed that this was not a barb, but a glory. Master of comedy, tragedy and history in one. Is it any wonder after Greene died his own printer published an apology to thee?

And I have not even began to get to thy main body of works. Sweet Will, believe not the likes of those who criticise thee; they are knaves with hearts filled with jealousy and bile; did thy not make home of three theatres beyond thy first? Is not the Globe and The Blackfriars not indelibly marked with thy stamp?

How can you place Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, 12th Night, Sir Thomas More, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest as jests ‘bawdy and foul’?

Have I not said that our joint work Cardenio, is the finest I have ever done?

Away with such talk. It’s the distempered air of the Avon that makes you doubt yourself. Thy should leave there and return to us here in London. The Thames is more conducive to thy artistic temper.

But I know here holds only the body of thy brother. And that will not match the body of thy son, buried there in Warwick fields.

Again I dismiss such talk, such doubt of yourself. I believe that as the years pass thy work will grow in importance. If only one person in a score were to feel about thy craft as I do, then your fame will be assured for many centuries.

Enjoy thy ‘dotage’ sweet Will, but dismiss such worries for lessers in thy art. Unless you wish me to write your daughter Susanne and ask she withhold sweet Elizabeth from you if you indulge in such doubts. I know thy has no ‘will’ to resist the call of your grand child.

I remain your most devoted friend, John Fletcher

Sources: John Stow, ‘Survey of London 1603’ Neil MacGregor, ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World’ Micheal Wood, ‘In search of Shakespeare’.